Pocket Aces: Tycoons, Celebrities, Oligarchs and Algorithms

Inside the high-stakes poker games at the heart of shocking indictments

A source close to Eugene and Ilya Trincher—the sons of Vadim Trincher, who is named in the indictment, as is Eugene—claims that the elder Mr. Trincher is a mystery, even to the sons’ closest friends. “Nobody knows what Vadim’s business actually is, because Vadim doesn’t talk to anybody.”

The former employee claims that Eugene and Ilya Trincher were partners in heading the sports-betting operations, and that the younger Trinchers were the go-to sports betting option for many Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. Apparently they weren’t bookmakers in the traditional sense, in which the goal is simply to line up even amounts of capital on both sides of a bet and live off the 10 percent vigorish collected from losing bettors. Instead, they had created an “algorithm” that predicted which teams would win. Ilya Trincher was rumored to be living in one of the priciest houses in L.A., with rent anywhere between $40,000 and $50,000, alleged to be funded by sports gambling money, including bets of up to $1 million per game.

One source said that Edwin Ting (known as Eddie, also indicted) “ran the highest-stakes poker games in New York, probably made more money than anyone else ever did playing poker in New York.” The source continued, “He’s just a Chinese guy from Queens, graduated from Baruch College. His wife was a poker dealer, now he’s a millionaire (and a real scumbag, by the way).”

According to a source with knowledge of Russian organized crime, the first person listed in the indictment, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, known as Taiwanchik, is from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and “has the highest ranking you can have in the Russian prison system. He’s part of the prison brotherhood. They sit in jail with newspapers, caviar and laptops.”

Another part of the sports betting picture is Noah Siegel, known as “The Oracle,” who was also indicted. According to the former employee, The Oracle wasn’t involved in business decisions; instead, “he was the smart kid with glasses who knows every player on every team and would pick the winning teams” with the goal of bankrupting traditional bookmakers.

The employee TheObserver spoke to and all others working the games were asked to sign disclosures stating that they “never met” certain celebrities, and they were not allowed to use phones during special bookings, which included “a lot of lawyers, a lot of finance guys, a lot of hedge funders.”

Another name that came up during TheObserver‘s investigation was the R&B record producer Irv Gotti a.k.a. Irving Lorenzo, who is known to run games. One source was shocked that Mr. Gotti was not snared in this dragnet. He said Mr. Gotti “surprisingly was not raided during this whole thing, which is extremely strange. The feds have walked into his [poker game] in the past and have never shut him down.”

One source painted a picture of how the whole thing works.

“First of all, you have an apartment that’s rented under somebody else’s name. You buy a poker table, some chips and chairs, and a casino shuffler on the black market, because they’re illegal to buy. The shuffler is to make the players feel comfortable that there’s no cheating going on. There are two dealers and two to 10 players per game. There are two to three waitresses and also ‘massage girls.’ The games go anywhere from six to 48 hours. Generally, the games start in the evening and finish in the morning, because most people need to go work, see their families and whatnot.”

Another gambler who frequented the game spoke of the card shuffler but put a different spin on it. “It wasn’t so much to prevent cheating. It was there to ensure there was always a freshly shuffled deck.” This gambler recalled attending games hosted by Mike Sokoloff, a New York society fixture who dated Charlotte Ronson, that were frequented by David Lee (then a New York Knick, now a Golden State Warrior), as well as “a lot of other Knicks.” This gambler said he “saw David Lee at the Molly Bloom games as well,” referring to the 34-year-old socialite who is referred to as “Poker Princess” in the indictment and is the sister of Olympic skier Jerry Bloom.

A different source also referred to the Poker Princess: “Molly Bloom just ran games, flew private jets back and forth to run games for the wealthy.”

According to someone with inside knowledge of the games, “There are no nobodies in this indictment, literally. These people are simple businessmen—not mob, not anything relating to it. They are maybe doing some organized crime, but they’re not the mob.”

Simple businessmen they may be. But there’s a good chance that not-so-simple trouble awaits. One source with extensive knowledge of the casino industry told TheObserver that U.S. tax law requires all winnings to be reported as income. And as a check on the dishonesty of individual gamblers, a casino is required to report any payout in excess of $10,000.

Like a guy catching a straight flush on the river—it’s a solid bet that this 84-page indictment naming 33 individuals is only the tip of the iceberg.

Based on a ruling last year in a Staten Island case (see link), it would seem the loansharking, tax evasion and money laundering activities are the potentially criminal part—less so the poker itself: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-judge-rules-poker-game-skill-considered-illegal-gambling-article-1.1141574.